How to Start a Business Book to Grow Your Brand

In this video I visit the Basic Bananas office for some fun and business. Franziska and I get down to talking about how to start a business book which can elevate your authority in your industry and be a powerful lead generator.

Duration: 5:96 mins

In this video we cover:

overcoming obstacles when getting started writing

Franziska’s secret book tip

how many words you need for your book

how to sort these ideas into a structure in just minutes

creating an outline and breaking down sections so you can complete each chapter more easily

Tweetables:

Check out BasicBananas.com for awesome business building tips from Franziska and Christo!

Transcription:

Franziska: Hi and welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. Actually, today we have “Tribal TV.”

Anthony Puttee: Tribal TV.

Franziska: Coming up, we have a tribal gathering later so we have Tribal TV today with Anthony. I’ve got Anthony here from the Book Cover Cafe. The reason I invited Anthony to share a little tip with you is because Anthony is really good at book publishing and he understands the whole process from beginning to end. I actually asked him when he walked in just before with his partner. I said, “Could you share something with our audience?” and he happily agreed.
Obviously, having a book is a good marketing strategy if you use it in the right way but a lot of people don’t maybe know. Writing a book is actually quite a big undertaking. Where do you even start? A lot of people ask us and themselves, “How to start a business book?”

Anthony: They would seem quite daunting, if you haven’t written your first book before. The simplest way to get started would be to brainstorm some ideas, down on paper, whiteboard. Start getting down ideas you could talk about in your book that would be of interest to your clients. Those ideas could come from emails and the answers you provide to your clients, also questions. You can use these to generate your ideas for your book. Just different topics.

Franziska: Add content ideas, things like that you could write about.

Anthony: Exactly. Different things you can write about that are related to your business you believe your clients and new prospects would want to know. Doing a whole brainstorm of notes is a great way to get everything out of the head and onto the page.
The next step is simply come up with 10 different headings using those ideas. Those 10 different headings may serve as subtopics for your book. Look at it like a very rough draft of your book’s table of contents.

Franziska: It would be the chapters only.

Anthony: Exactly. That way, you can clearly see a road map for yourself, for your book starting to take shape. What you can do then is just start writing and filling out content and information under each heading. You want to do that for each heading. There’s 10 headings and before you know, you’ll be writing. As soon as you get started, you’ll be surprised how much you can actually write and get out there. It just starts flowing. The brainstorm and getting 10 of those headings in order is a great way to get started and keep rolling.

Franziska: That’s usually the thing. Once you get started, you just start writing. You start writing away, more ideas come.

Anthony: It flows.

Franziska: Something else I do…and maybe you like that idea, too…is you have the 10 ideas and I believe it’s actually the same way. We come up with 10, 20, 30 ideas and I look at all these things, I actually go to pen and paper. Super old school, right?

Anthony: Of course.

Franziska: Old fashioned, pen and paper. I have usually a big paper and then I create a mind map. I have the core idea in the meal and then I write all the different ideas around it. I look at the whole picture and sometimes I realize I have to re-shift a few things because obviously the book has to have a really good structure to keep people engaged. Sometimes you have those 10 ideas and you put them on a mind map with little bubbles around. You make your core idea and you realize, “Wait a second. This thing would actually fit in perfectly with this thing over here.” You move things. It’s like a puzzle.

Anthony: That’s right. Then you might find yourself circling those ideas that would form the main chapters. Underneath you would have all the little subideas. All around that, they could be your little subheadings for each chapter section. As you start, the words will just start flowing. You will amaze yourself on how the information just comes. It’s all in there. You just need to get started and it all flows. Before you know it, you’ll understand how to start a business book better and have about 30,000 words which makes a great length for a book. You’re on your way to having your first book, which will be a great tool for your business.

Franziska: Exactly. Now this is a fantastic tip. Maybe just get started. Even if you don’t want to write a book, just write one. I mean, for shits and giggles. Just write one.

Anthony: It will only help their book.

Franziska: Even if you don’t publish it. Obviously, if you write a book and it sucks, you don’t want to publish it. Just write stuff anyway because the best way to get better at writing is to write.

Anthony: Practice.

Franziska: Write everyday. That’s something I’m definitely doing.

Anthony: You might have a small book. That can be something as simple as a free download off your website. You can do something for a Kindle eBook. If the words do really start flowing and you’ve got a lot of content, then you can look at the idea of a book.

Franziska: Perfect. This is enough for this tip. I’ll get Anthony back in another time because he’s got a lot of book tips on a lot of different aspects of a book. Obviously, this is just the beginning of your book journey. We’ll do some other ones. Maybe we can do a podcast, too.

Anthony: We could.

Franziska: Let’s do it. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for watching. If you liked it, feel free to leave a comment. Share it. Do any of that stuff. We’ll see you next time.